Biden Is Likely Better Off Than the Polls Suggest

[RandySF]

Fareed Zakaria suggested on CNN over the weekend that Donald Trump’s strength in the election may be even stronger than recent polls suggest because “they have tended to underestimate Donald Trump’s support, not overestimate it.”

He added: “I doubt that there are many shy Biden voters in the country.”

But what Zakaria misses is that there’s not much evidence of “shy Trump” voters either. Research from Yale and from Pew Research found little to no evidence in support of the theory.

If anything, polls actually tend to favor challengers because it’s an easy way to register general displeasure at the expense of the incumbent president.

In 2012, former President Obama led Mitt Romney by less than a point in national polls, but he ended up winning the popular vote by 4 points.

In 2020, most polls overstated challenger Joe Biden’s national lead over Trump and the election ended up closer than many expected.

The current FiveThirtyEight polling average shows Trump ahead of Biden nationally by just .9%.

But if the past is any indication, Biden may be better off than the polls currently suggest.



https://politicalwire.com/2024/05/13/biden-is-likely-better-off-than-the-polls-suggest/

[kimbutgar]

1. I never answer my landline nor cell phone from unknown numbers

They are not reaching supporters of President Biden because we don’t need to wear clothing or put bumper stickers on our cars supporting him.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. I agree. These stupid polls have been all taken over by the far right owners of various media outlets, so

you can't trust these outlets anymore for representative news (they want only their news) and they also falsely portray polls and their results in various ways, via their comments, their skewing of the sampling base used to obtain the poll results, e.g., 80% republican, vs. 20 % democratic like one poll did. As for me, I don't respond to ANY poll or the like, as I can't really guarantee that my results will be fairly represented.

[RandySF]

10. I think it's a matter of Trumpers always ready to scream 'MAGA'.

[NoMoreRepugs]

3. If Biden doesn't have a comfortable lead at this point this country is in fact a Deplorable ShitHole.

[JohnSJ]

4. In other words the national polls indicate a dead heat. I think

Zakaria‘s assessment is wrong also for the simple fact that trying to extrapolate this with what happened in 2016 Is nonsense because it ignores what happened 11 days before the 2016 general election. Hillary was leading in all polls before Comey sent a letter to the republicans in Congress saying they were trying to determine if this was new information, and the media immediately misrepresented that and falsely said the email investigation had been reopened, followed by parading every right wing pundit across various outlets perpetuating that lie. It was only late Friday, the weekend before the general election, that Comey quietly came out and said there was no additional information to reopen the email investigation.

The damage had been done by that time, and the lead Hillary had was completely erased.

[wryter2000]

5. Polls predict nothing

Polls haven't been right for years. And bear in mind, all approval ratings are polls.

The only predictor we have now is real behavior in the form of how people have voted in elections, and all of those point to over-performance by Democrats. I'm ignoring "the polls."

[lees1975]

6. Actually, at this point in the 2012 election, Romney led Obama by 4.

And he was "ahead" in all of the important swing states. I remember 538 scrambling, just a week before the election, to try and reverse their predictions and numbers as a couple of the bigger, more accurate polls started showing less tightening, and more votes heading toward Obama.

[Poiuyt]

7. I sure hope this is right

I saw the Fareed Zakaria spot yesterday and became very depressed. I have a lot of respect for Zakaria.

[louis-t]

8. He lost most of the women's vote. He lost the Independant vote.

He lost a lot of Republican congressional vote. I can't imagine that he gained any Dem voters. He lost by almost 8 million votes last time. How could he even be in contention?

[MadameButterfly]

9. i want you to be right but

Trump overperformed dramatically in both of his elections.

Polls have a better track record that we give them credit for. Hillary was 3% ahead in May and for most of the campaign, winning by 3%, just not distributed to win the electoral college.

Hey, I want to feel better too but I don't think we change things by pretending. We need to face the situation we are in and do something about it.